I want to caveat this post saying I have played the following titles:Hyper Dimension MK2, Hyper Dimension Rebirth 3, Hyper Dimension Action Unleashed, Mega Dimension VII. I have 100% all of them. I love the games and the characters: especially Plutia. Rebirth 3 had by far the best pacing/content and story the critics are missing out on just how well of a job you did creating that game.

In fact with Mega Dimension we actually take a step backwards in terms of pacing. To much text at times. Not clear enough what we are doing. And while we added all sorts of new fun features we didn't seem to realize that we were just disappointing fans of a traditional or more traditional JRPG(For more details read everything about Persona 5, many aspects of this game should be considered). Perhaps I am the minority and I think you should sell to your market, but with square enix dead in the water I think its time we have a new power house of RPGS out there.

Here is what I envision for a hyper dimension game that blows the others out of the water. Firstly: quit making the entire game based on analogies to console systems. That can be a big part of all the characters but make a clear plot and antagonists that are serious(More similar to what you did in Rebirth 3). Less joke bosses would be a plus. A great game can be funny, sad, heartbreaking, silly, intense, and I see your games trying to do this but one thing really stops them from going all the way in a lot of gamers hands. It is the fact that all towns, story scenes literally everything is pure Visual Novel. That would be fine if you had pacing, and activities in between like a game such as Persona V. But you do not its very much a back and fourth of in your title Mega Dimension the main series literally pure visual novel, and the tiniest hint at trying to make it a game.

I understand these are visual novel games but they would be better if they leaned more towards traditional JRPG and less visual novel.

I just imagine walking around a bustling planeptune, or lastation, or any of the cute places. And actually talking to people I want to, being able to interact or not. Walking into stores. Finding easter eggs, like tiny puzzles inside of towns. and a lot more creative ways to implement the flags idea you had in the most recent PS4 title. Here is the thing Persona V made a visual novel game that was also a jrpg. I feel like you guys constantly make a 20 % jrpg game without complex enough systems and than make it 80% visual novel. I have a feeling you tell yourself its what the fans want but the truth is thats a small base of people. Their is a hot calling for good solid JRPGS after Persona 5. Mega Dimension Neptunia VII should have been that game but it wasn't. Now is the time to make the next game better than ever.

I love you characters and the games you make, if you make mindless visual novel the overwhelming majority of your games content I will continue to skip the majority of your games. I love a good cut scene. But the way characters build relationships in Persona 5, the drama, the build up, the simplicity, the style, all this could be done in your own way to make an rpg that would kill anything square enix has done in years.

Lastly, the 2nd tier transformations were utter garbage. Just make us some kind of Talent/skill system, a more customizable experience. Special abilities for some characters. Don't use so many characters unless you have a good reason, I think anything more than 8-10 is getting seriously excessive. Just send half the goddess away and they can get unlocked at the end of the game for the die hard fans.

I love all the fans and will continue to support you I really hope you learn from the fantastic team at Atlus and make not just a visual novel with a sprinkling of a game underneath, but a beautiful game accented like a beautiful piece of art with the visual novel place and timing in the correct spots. I may be asking to much and I know its not easy. I expect greatness from you. Good luck in all your future endeavors. Thanks for letting me play.

P.S. If we are going to keep learning from other game devs, a parody game of Nier Automata with your Neptune characters would be utterly amazing, but it needs to be a real game not a visual novel. Because Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, is so complex with many systems and customizations I have a feeling that will capture my time a lot more than Cyber Dimension Neptunia. I am really excited for Cyber Dimension I just have a feeling it will not be complex enough to really capture my attention but the classes and cute nature of the game will make me pick it up all the same.

P.P.S. Nier Automata is a wonderful game and though it is much different than games you produce, the game play has a refreshing charm of really knowing that it is a game. And it plays fun, cinematic, stylish, unique etc.

First of all, I agree that Rebirth 3 is probably the best. Megadimension looks somewhat good, but the tax it has on the system is just far too much for the otherwise low graphical quality it provides.

Megadimension is also severely lacking in gameplay. There are battles that require certain characters in a party, so no longer can I do something like my solo Plutia playthrough of Rebirth 3. The storytelling is painfully non-interactive, reducing the "game" part of an RPG.

Next up the way the combo attacks and SP abilities interact are highly limited and poorly designed, it is still better to blow off your SP on boss fights, and conserve resources for normal abilities by doing combo attacks. Needless to remind every reader, combo attacks were the signature feature of the original Neptunia game. They are improved from Rebirth 3, in that its no longer possible to just use the highest power/rush attack 3 times for a combo, but the fact that the "chaining" effect is just a bit of extra damage makes it still a shallow and disappointing experience.

Yes. I want combo attacks to have all kind of effect when chained correctly (Bonus if it follows a rush attack, bonus if all attacks before were standard attacks, etc.) I want stuns, knockdowns, roots, pulls, even Damage over Time effects, so I can really build the character I like to play to my liking. Things like an ice attack would leave a patch of ice on the ground that reduces enemy movement for those who start their turn in it. Or a fire patch that deals constant damage. A rush combo that adds a passive exe generation/regen when it's "critical" is triggered by the right combo. A combo ability that triggers it's critical if it strikes a poisoned foe... If you ever played guild wars, then I'm sure Leaping Mantis Sting/Jungle strike will come to your mind, or basically half the assassin chain abilities .

So besides that, yeah, too much storytelling and it's not even done in the fun way. And no, DON't look at Atlus (Although the ps2 wizardry game they made was really cool) for inspiration, but rather the actual colossi of narrative based RPGs. Ultima VI and VII.

Both of those games are heavily narrative based, but also feature great world interaction: You can bake bread (Ultima VII), play the piano (Ultima V), all the while exploring interesting concepts with it's story. You can go into anyone's house, steal their shit, get into trouble for that, or just talk to them instead and ask them about their daily lives (Text parser). Yes. EVERY house has an inhabitant that can be talked to. Every quest is meaningful instead of whatever the junk we have in neptunia is called.

As for visual novels: Don't bash them, they can be done right: both Torment games (Planescape and Tides of Numenera) are great examples. One thing that really makes them feel good is that you get more choices to make during conversations than just flipping to the next dialogue line / visual book page, and those choices are both rather cleanly communicated (you get to see what your character/nameless one will say exactly as he does, rather than a loosely connected keyword like goddamn sim noire) and meaningful.

Oh and both torment games are actually games... Exploration, interaction, fun combat, you know, something one should expect from a game.

Now I don't agree with the idea of dropping half the cast and adding them as unlockables for the next difficulty level (call it ng+ if you are young or a console gamer), unless I get to choose which character goes to my party, rather than whatever story I'm supposed to sit through. Yep. I'm done having blanc join in halfway through the game so I can't do a solo cleric/paladin(Lord) run, or same with Vert, although she is pretty meh gameplay wise and was only good when I made her a Valkyrie in Wizardry 8.

As far as the skill system goes, I'd prefer... pretty much anything but what we have now. From diablo 2 skill trees to guild wars style skill collection to Sacred 2's combat arts, as long as I can customize my builds.

Let me toss my 2 cents in:
1.quit making the entire game based on analogies to console systems

The entire franchise is one big analogy to console culture, asking to stop that is to stop making the games, period.

2 . Following Atlus' example: as someone who has played P5 I can see where your coming from but that is impractical, as persona is a time management game with VN and JRPG parts mixed in, plus you can't take notes from atlus. They are encoded with a signature only atlus can use ;3

3 Ultima. What is it? Like final fantasy ultima?

4 .customization, While it is nice to have it is not always practical to put in for a number of reasons:

A. Dialog, I think it can work but only on a new main character of the next game as neptune is already know as the meta queen, or as I like to call her, Deadpool if he was a clean mouth gamer.

B Skills, I agree skills need more flare like FLAMING NEPTUNE BREAK or something even crazier

But I am off track, are 3 reasons,
1. It is a small game company.
2 bills and payrolls
And last but not least.

Nintendo lawsuits

Come on you know they don't take a joke or are fan friendly, and as HDN gain more players the more Nintendo will find out

I had a good wall of text ready to post but I hit cancel so here is a cliff note of what it was

Thanks for the thoughtful posts guys, you echo what I wanted to say but couldn't find the words to. Please keep expressing yourselves clearly on the forums and hopefulyl we will have a better game in the future.

Boro especially hit the nail on the head of things that were disappointing and really left you wanting more. I only post because I care about these games! Thanks for reading and thanks again for the great ideas. Yes Boro my idea to drop half the cast was bad I think I meant quit limiting my party and just let me play the game. Required characters when you have a cast of 14 is really stupid.

I don't mean to bash Visual Novel games, its just that to me a good visual novel game plays like Persona V, and I think they should aim to make pacing and activities or gameplay that is more in line with that, basically its actually a game and a visual novel not just one then the other or way to much of one and missing the other etc. The problem I have with a game being so visual novel based is that I want to play a game not experience a visual novel so its forcing me to because they seem lazy. I just want to play games and have fun!

BTW I watched 100% of cut scenes in Persona V I am not impatient I just require quality writing and story to keep interested. I may have blindly bought these games when they first came to play an RPG, but from now on after Persona 5 I will be a lot more critical in what I let capture my attention. Dragon Quest XI for starters seems a good game to focus on. I hope in the future I can add Neptunia as not just a niche but a Class S game that ranks among the titans of RPGS.

"Visual Novel" is a strange term since it can vary from something that is not interactive at all (other than turning a page from time to time) to something where you make decisions at points in the conversation to something that has a game attached.

A famous film critic once said that "video games are not art;" Shakespeare's play is art; his play performed on the stage is art; his play performed as a movie is art; a comic book of a Shakespeare play is art; a Visual Novel renders elements from the comic book and/or movie with subtitles and voiceovers, that's obviously art too.

The critic is pushed into this position where any element of interactivity beyond page turning causes the art to be instantly effaced, which I think is an odd definition of "art", particularly if it embraces this:

Visual Novel-type mechanics can be found in other games, such as the "skits" mechanism from the Tales games or the role of dialog in Fallout: New Vegas, where you do get to make choices in the conversation. Neptunia, however, uses the visual novel frame quite deliberately, to signify that is is a Visual Novel.

Neptunia games involve at least four graphics systems: (1) 2D Cel Animation, (2) Dungeon, (3) Combat, and (4) Special Attack. Thus you get a spectrum that ranges the over-the-top animations that might even cause Nausea (as in the case of the intro for the very first game) with the lower production costs that make it a very writerly platform. (Note the OP liked Rebirth 3 because of the writing)

You could make the case that cel animation dialogue can be better artistically than the dialogue you find in a game like MGS 5 or Fallout New Vegas, which often look grotesque if you actually watch the scenes. Comparing the Doujin visual novel to Neptunia is like comparing an old L.A. Noire movie to Chinatown: Neptunia graphics are not consistently AAA (despite an occasional flash of AAAAAAAA) but they are head and shoulders over a Visual Novel genre that is frequently no-budget, not just low-budget.

If I had any complaint about the mainline Neptunia games, it is this desire to create a large amount of content in the form of dungeons coupled with an unwillingness to do the work to make all of those dungeons: thus dungeons get reused, both in the form of item variations available through the "Remake System" and in terms of the exact same map and art reused in another spot on the map with a different name.

V2 made an improvement here by having the very complex indoor levels (particularly the train stations) which could be varied by closing off pathways.

In a future Neptunia game I'd like to see procedural generation as a mechanism; i'd imagine that dungeons similar to the neptunia dungeons could be made by assembling tiles and that could be a lot of fun.

Oh you mean they randomly stumbled upon something we've known for two decades as modular design?

Wow, if only they knew about games like the first and second Diablo, the first and second Dungeon Siege games...

For trying to make long content yet resorting to something that looks like a shoddy copy-paste job, it's probably because they screw up their own deadlines. I mean, it's perfectly possible to make 80 levels of mostly balanced content for 8-10 characters/character classes with multiple paths of character development, and once the mechanics are in place, content creation is butter smooth and fast, and all it requires is pacing out the content properly.

But that requires proper design, something that Compile Heart clearly lacks. And by proper design I mean the approach Lord British did for his Ultima series, And if you wonder what the heck ultima is, it's basically the template for JRPGs.

And what did he do? He populated the game with ideas, characters, places, monsters, and worked on them until they all tied together with stories and quests to become more than the sum of the parts. Sure that doesn't seem to work for skills, abilities and combat options, but giving multiple choices in character development, and figuring out how these choices will synergize and interact (like how Crate does with Grim Dawn) makes for a much more satisfying game experience, something people love to talk about long after they finish whit whatever story JRPGs normally drag around.

It is funny that you mention Lord British because he is the kind of legendary character produced by the western game industry: I never know what they did there, but Origin had an office next to the airport in the town I grew up, right next to the factory (owned by town's mayor) that made meter movements for the Church of Scientology. The son of an astronaut, he pounded out two single density disks of BASIC on his Apple ][ for his first game -- then flew to the ISS in 2008!

Neptunia could certainly mine the Western game industry for more material, I think of...

Reading USENET on an account from NASA in the Summer of 1993 before starting graduate school (and obsessed with Urusei Yatsura, enough that I was learning kana and some kanji), and everybody thought the game John Carmack was making was impossible...

CDProjekt starts out bootlegging disks into Eastern Europe, becomes a general game industry conglomerate, produces games like the Witcher, starts the "Good Old Games" store that competes with Origin, Steam etc.

Then there was 38 Studios, which produced a beautiful disaster of a game before going down in flames in a financial and political scandal.

Note though, that the Neptunia approach is driven by characters and humor; I definitely do remember how awful the bad ending was for Megadimension V2, plus we have stories about "Smells like Peashy" and "For I have become pond scum, destroyer of soap..."

Insert Photos

Web address (URL)

Image URL

If your URL is correct, you'll see an image preview here. Large images may take a few minutes to appear.
Remember: Using others' images on the web without their permission may be bad manners, or worse, copyright infringement.